Willie Lau Wing-wai was born in Hong Kong on 29 December 1951 under the name Lau Wing-wai, first using the stage name Wai Lit, and is an actor and action director who was once a Shaw Brothers artiste and is now a basic-contract artiste at Television Broadcasts, living in Sai Kung. Educated at St. Margaret's English Primary School and two secondary schools, he trained from childhood in the northern Choy Li Fut style. After finishing secondary five in 1968 he applied to the Royal Hong Kong Police, but, opposed by his mother, left for Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, in 1971 to take a hotel-management diploma and returned in 1973. Back home he bowled at the South China Athletic Association and, on a wager with a friend, enrolled in TVB's third artiste training class, but was spotted during the fourth round of auditions by Josephine Siao and Philip Chan and appeared in the crime film Jumping Ash, debuting in June 1974. He then joined RTV at the invitation of a producer, rising from stunt work to character roles. In 1977, filming a motorcycle chase for the RTV series Tai Cheong Fu, he and the bike plunged about forty feet into a river; he was taken to Queen Elizabeth Hospital with a shattered breastbone. He moved to TVB in 1978 and from the mid-1980s worked at Asia Television in supporting parts, his best-known role being Yuming Shisan in My Date with a Vampire. He also worked behind the camera as an action director, wrote a 1981 screenplay, designed action for a 1988 film and directed the 1989 feature Ngo Mo Lai Yan. A keen racer, he finished second in a Macau touring-car race in 1987. He retired around 2001 and briefly emigrated to New Zealand, returning in 2004; in 2015 he came back to acting at TVB's invitation, first in Angel in the Making and later in A Fist Within Four Walls and Daddy Cool. He is a member of the artistes' alumni and performers' associations and has a son.
Rising from stuntman to character actor, Lau witnessed the shifts in Hong Kong action cinema and television; working both in front of and behind the camera as an action director and director, he returned in 2015 and became familiar again through A Fist Within Four Walls and Daddy Cool.
Achievements
- 1974 · Spotted by Josephine Siao and Philip Chan, he made his debut in the crime film Jumping Ash.
- 1989 · Directed the feature film Ngo Mo Lai Yan.
- 2015 · Returned to acting at Television Broadcasts' invitation, debuting in the drama Angel in the Making.